Choke
by The Hamartia of it All
Summary: A certain Teen Wonder reflects during the ride home after the events of Betrothed on choking, undeniable romantic feelings, and his duties as a hero. Robstar. First story so no flames please!


_Hello fellow Teen Titans fans! I'm new to the community, so please no flames! R & R, s'il vous plait!_

_Set after the events of Betrothed. Robin's thoughts as the T-ship brings them home. Robstar, naturally (my childhood OTP)_

_A/N: Don't own, never have and never will. Italics are direct quotes from the episode "Betrothed," which I also do not own_

* * *

_"I'm glad you'll be staying with the Titans for a long time and…" _Robin paused, his voice catching in his throat. Why was it so hard to express himself around her? He took a breath. "_…not getting married."_

Sitting in his pod as the T-ship left the Tamaranean atmosphere, Robin tried his best to clear his thoughts of the day to no avail. 'Stupid stupid stupid…' he chastised himself. 'She must think you're an idiot! "I'm glad you're not getting married…" Stupid!'

Only hours earlier — not counting travelling at the speed of sound in space — did Starfire's words rip his heart to shreds.

_"I am leaving for Tamaran." _She did not meet their eyes, which were distant and troubled.

Raven stared at the alien quizzically. "And_ you're taking all your stuff with you because…?"_

A sad smile. _"I am not ever coming back."_

_"WHAT?!" _Jaws became unhinged. Eyes threatened to pop out of their sockets. Even Raven couldn't contain her feelings, and Robin almost expected something to explode. But his concern had only been focused on Starfire.

_"Starfire, what's wrong?"_ Was she trying to run away again? He'd caught her attempting to leave the team so many times, and was always the one consoling her when she felt… well when she felt like an alien in a strange world, to put it literally. Had something happened to make her feel insecure of her place on the team again?

_"Nothing is wrong," _she chirped with false enthusiasm. Her smile became bigger and more forced. _"I am… getting married!"_

_"WHAT?!" _Cyborg, Beast Boy, and Raven shouted, shock registering in their expressions. Robin couldn't breathe, but at the same time he had wanted to say something. The result of that was a cross between a chicken squawk and a choked gasp before he sank to the floor and prayed it would swallow him up.

Presently, in the pod to his left, Starfire was staring out the glass wistfully, with her hand pressed against it as she said silent farewells to her home planet. The new Grand Ruler, Emperor Galfore, had stood on the airstrip waving good bye to his "bumgorf," and strangely, he'd had an approving smile on his face when he looked at Robin. Only hours earlier, he'd glared down at the Teen Wonder and yelled ferociously in his face as Tamaranean guards held him at point blank with alien weapons. _"IT IS FORBIDDEN FOR OUT-WORLDERS TO TOUCH THE PRINCESS!" _Then a timid, "_Um, please do not harm my friend"_ from the Tamaranean princess herself.

God, has it only been hours? Only the day before did he feel his heart breaking when Starfire told the Titans that she was leaving for her home planet and never returning because she was getting married. And having been raised by the Dark Knight — who trained him to control his emotions yet never once gave him advice on the opposite sex — he was reduced to a stammering idiot as Starfire hastily packed everything she owned into the T-Ship. The others tried to reason with her, pleading for her to stay and forget about the marriage. Robin could only watch and stutter, his heart caught in his throat as the beautiful alien sadly explained that she could not forsake her duties to her planet. The Titans didn't understand the importance of her loyalty to Tamaran until the overwhelmingly intimidating Galfore and the guards genuflected to their friend, to their astonishment.

"_PRINCESS?!" _They'd screamed in unison. How could Starfire neglect telling them, her best friends, that important detail about herself? Robin's shoulders had drooped as Starfire sheepishly giggled and ran inside the palace. He'd felt worthless… no, that was too strong a word. He'd felt _unworthy._ How could he, a "boy wonder" who'd grown up in the circus, then orphaned and raised by the Batman, be worthy enough to love — er, _strongly like —_ a princess?

"_Did you know about this?"_ Cyborg inquired of him. Raven and Beast Boy stared at him expectantly. Surely, as Starfire's best friend on the team, he'd known about her royal heritage?

But he had glared, not meeting their eyes. "_Just go."_ 'Leave me to my misery.' A human circus orphan in love with a beautiful, powerful alien princess. His life was the worst fairy tale ever.

Why did he have such a hard time expressing his feelings? He couldn't deny that he cared for Starfire in a different, more intense way than the other Titans. So why couldn't the Teen Wonder plead for her to ditch her own wedding and stay with him? Beast Boy could do it. Cyborg could do it. Raven, in her own way, could do it. So why is it that whenever he tried, gibberish came out?

"_YOU'RE GETTING MARRIED?!" _He'd still been fuming, thoughts delirious. Robin couldn't seem to register anything else except for that, and he vaguely heard her gushing excitedly about "the sick home feeling" and "fresh squeezed glorg" and "portkins…" whatever those were. Was he hyperventilating? Maybe that's why he couldn't understand a word she was saying until Beast Boy voiced his wariness of the big portkins.

"_YOU'RE GETTING MARRIED?!"_ Funny, the normally calm and collected leader of the Titans couldn't seem to formulate any other sentence.

Raven merely rolled her eyes at the Titans leader. His jealousy and rage must have been giving the empath a headache. "_Yeah_,_ uh, anyone we know?"_

Hesitation. _"Oh, __I have never met him. My betrothed has been chosen for me by the Grand Ruler of Tamaran."_

Out of nowhere, Robin found himself floating out of the spacecraft and clinging to the window of Starfire's pod, defying all laws of physics. _"YOU'RE GETTING MARRIED?! _AND_ TO SOMEONE YOU'VE NEVER EVEN MET?!" '_Who cares that I just risked my life crawling out of my pod in the cold, airless void of space to scream at the girl of my dreams?'

"_…it is the way of my people,"_ was the only thing he heard after he'd safely gotten into his pod and oxygen into his system.

"_But Starfire —"_

It was uncanny how every time he finally mustered the courage to express his feelings for her, or Starfire was about to say something to him, the universe interrupted them with alien attacks, evil sisters, and whatnot. [_A/N Anyone else notice that? Annoyed the hell out of my prepubescent shipper heart!] _And neither one of them seemed to have the guts to bring up the topic again, leaving it all open-ended. What was she trying to say to him all those times? What if he hadn't choked? Would things be different between them?

Back in the present, Robin looked over at Starfire's pod, where she sat sleeping soundly. He couldn't help but smile as he watched her eyelids flutter and her lips part ever so slightly as she dreamed. Could she be dreaming of him?

"Yes," a voice interjected. Robin whirled his head to the right, where Raven stared at him in annoyance. "Your emotions are making it hard for me to meditate, Robin."

Robin blushed. "You heard what I was thinking?" He rubbed his neck feverishly, eyes darting anywhere but Raven's purple gaze.

The empath shook her head. "I won't violate your mind by entering it without your permission. But I'm feeling all kinds of things coming from you. Confusion. Relief. Frustration. Love. Shock. It's giving me a headache."

"Did you say love?"

"Dude, it's so obvious," said another voice. Beast Boy was listening in. Wasn't he asleep? "You were _so _jealous of that slug prince… thing!"

"I WAS NOT!" he protested, face heating up from both embarrassment and anger. "I was a friend being protective of another friend!"

"Keep using the word 'friend' like that!" Beast Boy retorted, bursting into laughter.

"Jealous!" Cyborg jumped in. "J-E-A-LOUS! Face it, you couldn't stand that your girlfriend was getting married to someone other than —"

"Shut up!"

"Come on, man! From the minute we got off the T-ship you kept tryin' to talk her out of it, or at least I think that's what you were gonna do since you were interrupted by an attack from the abominable nanny."

Oh god, that was frightening. Robin hadn't meant any harm: putting a comforting hand on her shoulder was something instinctive between them whenever either of them were expressing their doubts.

_"Look, Starfire, about this wedding —"_

An aggressive grunt, like that of a bear protecting its cub, cut him off before he was surrounded by pointy alien weapons and the aforementioned royal nanny as he nervously sweated out of every pore in his skin. Now _that_ was something he wanted to forget, especially the feeling he had as the guards formed a protective stance around her while they made their way to the dining hall. First he was losing his best friend to some random alien, now he couldn't even get near her!

"…then, while the rest of us were off investigating, you climbed onto her balcony like Romeo or somethin'." Was he still talking while he was having that unpleasant flashback? He vaguely heard them making fun of the way he'd reacted when he saw first the gorgeous Tamaranean he thought she'd marry and then the slime thing she was about to marry. Nonetheless, the half-robot's tone was light and teasing, but that didn't stop Robin from simmering with anger.

"Cy I bet you anything he was like, 'Star, run away with me and be my bride! Forget the slime thing, marry me!' and she was all 'No Robin I must do what is best for Tamaran,'" said the shape-shifter, doing his best — albeit horrible — impressions of the Teen Wonder and the Alien Powerhouse respectively. All jokes aside, he was dead-on accurate, not that Robin would ever admit that.

"Aw yeah! He would so do that! Did you see the look on his face when we broke out of prison and were fighting the guards and the wedding was starting? He was like 'No, not my Starfire!'"

"Was not —"

Beast Boy laughed. "Yeah! Then he went to the window like we were in some cheap chick flick and screamed her name!"

The Teen Wonder's heart thudded in his chest as he relived that moment. Menacing Tamaranean guards surrounding the Titans, their alien weapons pointed in their faces. Merely following Blackfire's orders, but dangerous nonetheless. Their fighting skills reflecting their ruthless warrior culture, metal clashing, Beast Boys various animal cries, Raven's black magic, Cyborg's sonic blaster, Robin's bird-a-rangs and bombs. All this chaos and adrenaline should have taken the Titans' leader's mind off of the wedding that was taking place.

Yet all Robin could think of were ways he could burst in there and save Starfire as Blackfire announced "Speak now or forever hold your peace" (if their wedding ceremony traditions followed Earth's). He could see it now: him fighting his way through the guards, throwing them aside as he reached the doors to the hall, screaming "I object!" as the court whirled around to face him with "How dare he interrupt a royal intergalactic wedding" looks on their faces, Starfire in her beautiful gown flying towards him so that they could run away together —

But with these merciless Tamaranean warriors, all of the plans he was daydreaming up seemed ineffective and impossible. There was only one thing that he could do to stall the wedding. And he prayed that he wouldn't mess up or get cut off.

As a group of guards backed him up against the window, he turned and saw Blackfire conducting the wedding. Starfire and the sklerchh were already exchanging vows. It was now or never. He couldn't choke this time or his best friend would be doomed.

_"STARFIRE!"_

"Would you all shut up?" Raven growled, snapping him out of his reverie. He didn't realize that Cyborg and Beast Boy were still taunting him, this time making sloppy kissing noises. Her eyes were aglow with her magic, and he knew she was doing all she could to contain her rage. The boys gulped. "You're going wake up Starfire."

Beast Boy pouted. "Come on, Rae, he finally did something worth making fun of. It was getting boring makin' fun of his derpy moments which happen like, every single day! 'Uh, ah, gah, Star… uh, hehe, I…'" The shape-shifter did his best awkward Robin impression, at which Cyborg chuckled and Raven struggled to hold back a smirk. "See? Not as fun anymore!"

"I gotta hand it to you, Rob, that took guts, interruptin' her wedding like that," Cyborg agreed. "If it were me and a girl I was in love with, I'd've —"

"I am not in love with her!" Robin grumbled.

"And denial is a river in Africa," Beast Boy joked. Then he yawned and stretched.

Cyborg sighed and rolled his eyes at their green-skinned friend. "Close enough. Look Rob, all I'm sayin' is, you gotta tell her how you feel. This might not be the only time you come close to losing her."

"There's nothing to tell her," Robin stubbornly said, refusing to lose this round.

"Cyborg's right. Robin, don't lie to us," Raven said gently. "And more importantly, don't lie to yourself." As the empath closed her eyes and began meditating, Beast Boy whispered, "Admit it, you love her" before he switched off his mike.

"It's okay, man. Nothin' wrong with being in love." Before the Teen Wonder could retort, Cyborg turned his attention back to the empty void of space ahead, where they were passing by the planet Jupiter. Thank god, almost home.

Robin sighed in relief as he found that Starfire was still peacefully asleep in her pod. It had been a long couple of days for her, excluding space travel time. Not to mention the stress of an arranged marriage, overthrowing her tyrant sister in an epic one-on-one battle, and abdicating her rightful place as Empress of Tamaran and subsequently appointing her childhood nanny as the new Emperor. Even with her superior alien strength, pain tolerance, and endurance, all that she'd been through had taken its on her.

He knew that having her older sister — whom she probably admired since she was so happy to see her when she came to Earth — as her own archenemy was taking a toll on her, and that it was difficult for her to choose between Tamaran and Earth. Even though he knew it was selfish, he was glad she chose Earth in the end.

"_I'm glad__ you'll be staying with the Titans for a long time and… not getting married."_ His voice still seemed strained after finally saying those words. Starfire may not realize it, but it was his way of expressing his feelings for her without choking up. But saying, "I'm glad you'll be staying with the Titans forever so that I can admire you from not-so-far-away and secretly strongly like you and more importantly not getting married so that I could have you to myself" would have been really creepy. As if he'd ever have the courage to say all that._  
_

Because let's face it, the fearless Teen Wonder was hopeless at speaking about his feelings. His mentor couldn't teach him how even if he tried. And to make things worse, his best friend, the beautiful and charming alien princess, reduced him to a choking-on-his-words, stuttering idiot.

It was strange to think of all the crazy things he'd for her. Besides spending much of their time on Tamaran trying to find a way to cancel the wedding and unintentionally uncovering a Tamaranean conspiracy regarding Blackfire and the invading alien, Robin's true intention was to convince Starfire to call off her betrothal and come back to Earth with them. He could immediately tell that her heart was not in the wedding, no matter how important it had seemed at the time.

_"We celebrate my sister's wedding at moonset, tonight!"_

The Teen Titans were fuming, and Robin lost control of his speech. _"TONIGHT?! Starfire, are you sure?"_ There was no way she could go through with this, even if her planet was in danger, right? He knew it was selfish, and he already knew what she was going to say.

She didn't even look at him as her shoulders drooped. _"Yes." _Then she was led away to her quarters, leaving her friends confused and saddened, but not before Blackfire discreetly — yet obviously — warned them to stay away from her.

But that didn't stop Robin from trying. As the others looked around their guest quarters — _standing,_ for fear of being eaten by what seemed to be living furniture, if there was actually any furniture — Robin paced the room, mulling over plans in his head. He was back to his old ways — determined, serious, and maybe a bit obsessed, only this time motivated by both his jealousy and his fundamentally undeniable feelings for the alien princess. Not that he'd ever admit that to the teasing Titans.

_"…We can't let Starfire go through with this!"_

_"Come on man,"_ said Cyborg, who obviously saw through this facade._ "You sure you're not just… you know…"_ Devious and knowing smirks spread on his and Beast Boy's faces. _"Jealous?"_

Robin was taken aback. _"Of that ugly, smelly… whatever it is?!" _Okay, maybe a little jealous. Not because of its appearance, smell, or even royal status — thank god he looked and smelled nothing like the slime alien — but of the fact that it was marrying his best friend. Even before he saw her betrothed, Robin couldn't help but think, "Why couldn't that be me?" Of course, such thoughts were ridiculous. For one thing, they were too young, only teenagers. For another, a serious relationship of any sort seemed impossible for him. There was no way Starfire, an exotic, powerful, charming and overall amazing alien princess would ever want to settle for him, no matter what connection they had between them. And besides, the Dark Knight had warned him not to fall for a colleague and engage in a serious relationship with her, or she could be targeted by their enemies. Being a hero sure had its drawbacks. 'Stupid, stupid, stupid —'

"Robin?" a voice whispered timidly into his headset, obliterating all of the hero's thoughts. Starfire. The internally conflicted leader turned his head to face his best friend, who seemed refreshed and back to herself after a good nap. "My apologies for interrupting your seemingly esoteric reverie, but, as Beast Boy would say, are we there yet?"

His gaze softened and he felt a smile forming on his face. Oh, how he adored her advanced and eloquent speech. He wondered where she learned how to speak English like that. Then he realized what she was asking him. "Oh, uh…" Crap, his voice was caught in his throat. Robin forced a cough and checked the dashboard. "We just passed Neptune." 'Come on, Grayson, say something witty and charming!' His vocal chords refused to co-operate.

"So, we shall be home soon?" she asked, her eyes glittering excitedly.

"Yeah, very soon," he replied, feeling his face heat up.

"Glorious! I had the sick home feeling during our time on Tamaran. I had hoped that our visit to my native planet would cure me of the sickness of home, but it only made me realize that my true home is on Earth, with you."

Robin's heart beat against his chest, threatening to escape from his body. "Me?" he croaked, a little too eagerly.

Starfire's green orbs widened when she realized what Robin had misunderstood, and she blushed, then grinned that wide, cheery Starfire grin. "Yes, you! And Raven and Cyborg and Beast Boy and all our friends!"

Robin cleared his throat. "Right!" He smiled back, half genuinely and half forced. "Friends! All our friends!"

"Is something the matter, friend Robin?"

"Nothing! I'm just…" 'Crazy about you, secretly wishing we could be more than best friends…' He sighed. "I'm really glad that you're staying on Earth with us. I can't imagine the Teen Titans without you. I mean, who else would laugh at Beast Boy's lame jokes or get Raven to come out of her room or discuss advanced astrophysics with Cyborg or hang out with me?"

Starfire's cheeks turned rosy and the two nervously looked away. Then she spoke up. "Robin, I —"

"Ladies and gentlemen, or whatever Beast Boy is, this is your pilot speaking," Cyborg said into his headset, mimicking the tone of a commercial pilot. "We are now approaching Earth's atmosphere and are due to land on Titans Tower in Jump City in approximately ten minutes. Please remain seated and fasten your seatbelts and — ah, to hell with that, WE'RE ALMOST HOME!"

Beast Boy and Starfire cheered, while Raven unenthusiastically clapped her hands. Cyborg let out a loud "WHOOP!" and finally, Robin decided to join in the celebration. "All right!" he shouted, pumping his fist in the air.

Then he looked over at Starfire, who was also looking at him with the same expression. Both blushed shyly, but did not tear their eyes away from each other's.

A certain empath sensed a strong, strange and pleasant feeling on her left. She looked over at her two friends, who were smiling at each other like they were the only two beings in the universe. Raven smirked, and even though she wasn't reading their minds she already knew what they were both thinking as they gazed at each other.

Deciding to have a little mischievous fun of her own, she dramatically cleared her throat and watched as the two lovebirds spun their heads around to face her, faces flaming with embarrassment. "So I know this is weird coming from me, but now that you're not doomed to spend the rest of your life with a gross slimy alien as your ball-and-chain, how about we celebrate when we get home?"

All of the Titans turned their heads to face her now, jaws unhinged and eyes bugging out. But the empath merely shrugged and raised her eyebrow at their leader. "Oh, I'm sorry Robin, I forgot that you wanted to spend some time alone with Starfire."

Cyborg and Beast Boy erupted with laughter, while Starfire looked at Raven and Robin confused and intrigued. The stuttering and rendered nervous Robin was an unnatural and comical shade of red, tugging at his collar and avoiding all eye contact. But Raven was enjoying this, so she pressed on. "What's the matter, Robin? Still trying to choke back your emotions?"

* * *

_I know, I'm sorry, it sucks… but it's my first time writing a one-shot. Sorry if it's really long, but hey you're a patient reader! Also, I apologize if Robin seems a bit out of character but that's just the way I write (I sometimes talk like Starfire in real life)_

_Anyway thanks for reading and if you like this then come back for more because I've got plenty of stories just waiting to be published!_

_Maribel ∞_


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